dream
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What is a dream?
A dream is a hallucinatory experience that occurs during sleep. Throughout history, dreaming, a common and distinctive phenomenon of sleep, has given rise to many beliefs, fears, and conjectures regarding its mysterious nature. Dreams have been viewed as a source of divination, a form of reality, a curative force, and an extension of the waking state.
Contemporary research focuses on discovering the complex biochemical and neurophysiological bases of dreaming, while psychoanalytic theorists emphasize the individual meaningfulness of dreams and their relation to personal hopes and fears. Some experts believe that dreams allow people to consolidate and arrange their memories, while others propose that dreams serve the physiological purpose of preserving and maintaining neural pathways. Still, some experts maintain that dreams are nothing more than random meaningless bursts of brain activity.
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When do most dreams occur during sleep?
Dreams predominantly occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a phase characterized by vivid, hallucinatory experiences. While dreaming can also happen during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, reports from those awakened during REM sleep are more frequent and detailed. REM sleep is marked by a unique combination of brain activity, including low-voltage EEG, intermittent rapid eye movements, and reduced muscle tone. During this phase, the activation of limbic structures may contribute to the emotional content of dreams, while the deactivation of frontal areas might explain their bizarre nature.
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Why do people dream?
Dreams, a prominent feature of REM sleep, are largely based on subjective reports recorded upon awakening. While dreaming also occurs during NREM sleep, reports from people waking from REM sleep are more frequent, and the content of their dreams is vivid and hallucinatory.
The functions of dreaming remain elusive, but brain activity patterns during REM sleep provide clues about dream properties. Activation of limbic structures during REM sleep may link to the high emotional content of dreams, while deactivation of frontal areas may account for the "bizarreness" of dreams, such as distortion of time and space and lack of control. Psychoanalytic interpretations suggest dreams offer a means to understand waking experience.
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What is REM sleep, and how is it related to dreaming?
REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is a phase of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements, reduced muscle tone, and faster, lower amplitude EEG patterns. During REM sleep, the brain is highly active, with activity in some regions exceeding that of NREM sleep and sometimes equaling or surpassing that of wakefulness.
Dreams are more likely to occur and are more vivid and florid during REM sleep, though they can occur in other sleep stages. Brain activity patterns during REM sleep, such as activation of limbic structures and deactivation of frontal areas, may contribute to the emotional content and bizarreness of dreams. The function of REM sleep isn't well-established, but it may play a role in brain development, memory consolidation, and learning.
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What are common types of dreams people experience?
Dreams vary widely but share common characteristics. Dream reports collected from people after waking often contain overt sexual and emotional content. Dreams commonly occur in ordinary physical settings and often involve the dreamer as a participant, with familiar people appearing.
Common types of dreams:
* Recurring dreams Dreams that repeat over a period with similar variations. Common themes include flying, being chased, or being late.
* Lucid dreams Dreams in which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming and can sometimes control the dream's content.
* Nightmares Disturbing dreams that can be triggered by stress, trauma, or certain medications.
* Emotional Dreams Dreams can be emotionally bland, but when emotions are present, fear and anxiety are most common, followed by anger and friendliness.4 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How do scientists study dreams and learn about their effects on the brain?
Scientists study dreams and their effects on the brain using various methods. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a key technique for recording brain activity during sleep. During REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the stage most associated with vivid dreaming, the brain exhibits an electrical pattern similar to that of an alert, waking person.
Brain imaging studies reveal specific areas of activation and deactivation during REM sleep, such as the limbic structures (linked to the emotional content of dreams) and the frontal areas (which may account for the bizarre nature of dreams). By awakening subjects during different sleep stages and collecting dream reports, researchers can correlate brain activity with the content and characteristics of dreams.
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News •
dream, a hallucinatory experience that occurs during sleep.
Dreaming, a common and distinctive phenomenon of sleep, has throughout human history given rise to myriad beliefs, fears, and conjectures, both imaginative and experimental, regarding its mysterious nature. While any effort toward classification must be subject to inadequacies, beliefs about dreams nonetheless fall into various classifications depending upon whether dreams are held to be reflections of reality, sources of divination, curative experiences, or evidence of unconscious activity.
Efforts to study dreaming
Dream reports
The manner in which people dream obviously defies direct observation. It has been said that each dream “is a personal document, a letter to oneself” and must be inferred from the observable behaviour of people. Furthermore, observational methods and purposes clearly affect conclusions to be drawn about the inferred dreams. Reports of dreams collected from people after morning awakenings at home tend to exhibit more content of an overt sexual and emotional nature than do those from laboratory subjects. Such experiences as dreaming in colour seldom are spontaneously mentioned but often emerge under careful questioning. Reports of morning dreams are typically richer and more complex than those collected early at night. Immediate recall differs from what is reported after longer periods of wakefulness. In spite of the unique qualities of each person’s dreams, there have been substantial efforts to describe the general characteristics of what people say they have dreamed.
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Estimates by individuals of the length of their dreams can vary widely (and by inference, the actual length of the dreams varies widely as well). Spontaneously described dreams among laboratory subjects typically result in short reports; although some may exceed 1,000 words in length, about 90 percent of these reports are fewer than 150 words long. With additional probing, about a third of such reports are longer than 300 words.
Some investigators have been surprised by repeated findings that suggest dreams may be less fantastic or bizarre than generally supposed. One investigator stated that visual dreams are typically faithful to reality—that is, they are representational. To borrow terms from modern art, dreams are rarely described as abstract or surrealist. Except for those that are very short, dreams are reported to take place in ordinary physical settings, with about half of them seeming quite familiar to the dreamer. Only rarely is the setting said to be exotic or peculiar.
Apparently dreams are quite egocentric, with the dreamer perceiving himself as a participant, though the presence of others is typically recalled. Seldom does the person remember an empty, unpopulated dreamworld, and individuals seem to dream roughly two-thirds of the time about people they know. Usually these people are close acquaintances, with family members mentioned in about 20 percent of dream reports. Recollections of notables or weird representations of people are generally rare.
In cases of so-called lucid dreaming, subjects report having been aware that they were dreaming as the dream was taking place. Most lucid dreamers also report having been able to direct or manipulate the dream’s content to some extent. The nature of lucid dreaming and even the coherence of the notion have been disputed, however. Some researchers have suggested that it is a unique state of consciousness that combines elements of wakefulness and ordinary (nonlucid) dreaming.
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The typical dream report is of visual imagery; indeed, in the absence of such imagery, the person may describe the phenomenon as thinking rather than “dreaming” while asleep. Rare statements about dreams dominated by auditory experience tend to be made with claims of actually having been awake. It is unusual, however, to hear of dreams without some auditory characteristics. Emotionally bland dreams are common. When dreams do contain emotional overtones, fear and anxiety are most commonly mentioned, followed by anger; pleasant feelings are most often those of friendliness. Reports of overtly erotic dreams, particularly among subjects studied in laboratory settings, are infrequent.
Many individuals report having recurring dreams, or dreams that are repeated over a short or a long period with at most minor variations. Some recurring dreams display common themes, such as being able to fly, being chased, being naked in public, or being late for an exam. Although there is no consensus among experts regarding the causes or interpretation of recurring dreams, many researchers believe that negative recurring dreams may be indicative of the presence of an unresolved conflict in the individual.
Despite their generally representational nature, dreams seem somehow odd or strange. Perhaps this is related to discontinuities in time and purpose. One may suddenly find oneself in a familiar auditorium viewing a fencing match rather than hearing a lecture and abruptly in the “next scene” walking beside a swimming pool. These sudden transitions contribute a feeling of strangeness, which is enhanced by the dreamer’s inability to recall the bulk of his dreams clearly, giving them a dim, mysterious quality.